blown.
He could only wait in the darkness and the silence and listen.
He waited a long time and nothing happened. He thought about Lucy Hamilton and about a lot of things he could have said to her over the telephone. None of this would have happened if he’d thought fast enough and kept her on the wire.
He was sorry he would never see Lucy again. Sorry that he would not be able to give her the string of simulated pearls, the only payment he had received or would have taken for recovering the real pearls for Christine Hudson, who had been Phyllis’s dearest friend.
Waiting in the black silence, his thoughts went back to Phyllis, his wife whom he had loved so dearly, who had died so valiantly trying to bring their son into the world.
Lucy was a lot like Phyllis. Perhaps that accounted for his feeling toward her. A mood of dejection seized him, and he thought, Phyllis is gone. Lucy is gone. The pearls are gone. He would probably never see his clothes or any of the things that were in his pockets.
The overhead light flared suddenly, went out again just as suddenly. Alert now, he sat naked and motionless on the toilet stool, waiting. Someone had found the burned-out fuse and replaced it with a good one. Current had flashed through for an instant, only to be shorted again by the wet contact.
Eagerness and anxiety flowed through him. Sweat ran down in streams from his body and made little pools of wetness on the floor around his feet. He wondered if they had any more fuses-if they would realize that it was he who was causing the short circuits from his concrete prison.
When the light flashed on again and burned steadily, he knew that the contact end of the bulb had dried sufficiently to let the current flow again.
He sat immobile and waited. No need to hurry now. Better to let the lights burn for a time. Long enough to convince those upstairs that they weren’t dealing with an ordinary short circuit. When he blew another fuse, they would know it was he who was causing it.
While he waited he decided to take advantage of the light, and he poured cold water over his face and body from his cupped hands, massaging his aching shoulder and working it gently as he did so. He took the broken glass out of the basin, then filled it and doused his head, washing the matted blood from his red and unruly hair.
When he finished he felt better. He reached over to the roll of toilet paper and tore off a sheet, folded it into a tiny square, then soaked it thoroughly. He held it ready in his left hand while unscrewing the bulb again.
Pressing the sodden mass firmly against the end of the bulb he inserted it carefully in the socket and twisted it tight. There was not even a momentary flash of current as it made contact.
Groping in the dark, he got a firm grip on the bottle neck and settled himself on the toilet to wait, confident that none of the house lights could burn again until the wad of wet tissue was removed.
He felt detached and impersonal about the whole thing now. His muscles were relaxed and he felt good. The darkness was reassuring and friendly. They had to come to him in the dark and he was going to have his chance. Maybe not a fifty-fifty chance, for, like all criminals, Perry and Getchie were cowards and would come together. He would, however, certainly have better than the thousand-to-one odds he had calculated a short time ago.
He heard them coming down the stairs. Just a faint sound beyond the concrete walls, but they were coming to him in the dark.
Shayne sat with his naked shoulders hunched, his long, hard body tense and ready to spring.
A thin ray of light crept through the crack under the door-the moving beam of a flashlight. Then Perry’s voice was startlingly loud in the utter stillness, “Shayne, you know what put the lights out?”
“Sure. I shorted them. The wires will be getting red hot and starting a fire in about five minutes.”
This wasn’t true, of course, but he hoped to God they didn’t know it.
Perry’s response was frightened and vengeful. “You lousy bastard. You’ll wish you’d left the wiring alone.”
“So’ll you after the joint burns down,” Shayne told him cheerfully.
There was a short silence outside the door. Then a motor roared. Shayne stood up with the jagged glass bottle in his right hand and his left hand against the door.
It didn’t give any, though he sensed that a car was being moved in the garage. Then light seeped in all around the edges of the door, and he realized they had swung another car around to throw the headlights directly on the door.
Shayne tensed himself and waited. If Perry continued to use his head, Shayne wouldn’t have a chance. All Perry had to do was stand back with his gun ready while Getchie drove the car away from the door and then let him have it when he leaped out into the glare of the headlights.
The palm of his hand was still on the door. He felt it quiver and knew that the bumper was being withdrawn.
He waited, the jagged bottle held belly-high and ready. Let them wonder what he was doing. Let them come in after him. This was his only chance-less than one in a thousand now.
A minute passed. Half of another minute. He could hear nothing except the subdued sound of an idling motor.
He felt a telltale quiver of the door as a hand touched the knob. He was ready and he hit it with his lame left shoulder the instant the knob turned.
The door flew open; Shayne collided with a bulky body just outside. The headlights blinded him, but he smelled the sweat of Getchie’s body and saw the dazzling gleam of a razor raised in a swift arc.
Shayne’s right arm was already driving the broken bottle forward and upward. It ripped through the corded muscles of the Negro’s arm and into the black face. An inhuman screech rattled in the Negro’s throat as he reeled backward and down.
A gun roared again and again in the confines of the underground garage. Shayne had leaped over the falling body and outside the circle of illumination where Getchie lay horribly twisted with his hands pressed to his face.
Shayne crouched beside the rear wheel of the car that had blocked the door of his prison and waited for Perry’s next move.
Perry had fired three times from somewhere back along the wall near the stairway where the headlights didn’t reach, and now he was waiting for Shayne to show himself. Shayne had the wild hope that the man carried no extra ammunition. Perhaps he could, by strategy, inveigle him into firing enough wild shots to empty the. 38.
Shayne moved along on hands and knees to the front of the car, keeping it between him and what he guessed to be Perry’s position, studying the situation carefully and trying to decide his next move.
The motor in the car that had been backed around to throw light on the doorway was still idling. It stood a few feet beyond the car Shayne was hiding behind, and he saw that if he could get to it and turn off the headlights, his chances of coming out of the cellar alive would be much improved.
Reflected light lay on the concrete floor between the two cars, and Shayne dared not risk crossing between them. He crouched silently for a time, closing his mind to Getchie’s moaning and to everything except his next move.
He finally began to inch cautiously back toward the far wall of the garage where other cars were parked, taking an angling course. His shoeless foot stubbed against a hard object, and he swore under his breath. He felt for it, grasped it, and threw it hard toward the dark wall beyond him.
Perry’s. 38 roared twice in quick succession. Then there was utter silence except for the slackening tempo of Getchie’s moans. Shayne guessed that the Negro was dying.
Shayne reached the wall of the garage, slid along it behind the parked cars until he reached a point which he calculated placed the car with burning lights and idling motor between Perry and himself.
Still inching forward in a half-crouch, alert for some sound of movement from Perry and hearing nothing, he decided the man was playing it smart, waiting Shayne out, close enough to the stairway and the street door to prevent the detective from getting past him. Shayne had the hope, too, that Perry was holding his fire after those five shots.
Shayne reached the rear of the car with the idling motor and felt his way cautiously along the side of it. The front door stood open. He had only to reach inside and switch off the headlights. He hesitated, his mind wary and active. Perry would still be guarding the exits with gun and flashlight. Things wouldn’t be much different with the car lights off.
